Hats off to the dole cheats and welfare scammers

DOLE cheats should be given jobs at Centrelink. If they can navigate this frustrating system, they’re smarter than me, writes Sarah Morgan.

DOLE cheats and welfare scammers have my respect.

Not for their shameful lack of morals, and definitely not for their rorting of a system that is vital to those who need Government financial support.

But I have to admit, there’s one area where I have nothing but admiration for these people: The fact they can even use the impossibly complicated, unhelpful and virtually inaccessible support network that is Centrelink.

In fact, the Government should forget penalising those who cheat the welfare system and seriously consider getting them jobs with the CSIRO.

I have experience using the welfare system, having accessed Austudy benefits when I was at university but, compared to my recent experiences as a new mother trying to register my child in the system; it was a breeze back then.

Could it have something to do with the 5000 staff the Government has got rid of in the past six years? I’ll leave you to be the judge, but the fact of the matter is my experiences a few years ago as a teenage student and now as a university-educated professional and new mother could not have been more different.

Some of Centrelink’s happy customers, protesting outside the Glenorchy branch. (Pic: Nikki Davis-Jones)

After spending hours online, then trying to get through to someone helpful on the phone and eventually going into a Centrelink office to try and sort out how to register my daughter for childcare, I have come to the conclusion that anyone who can figure out the system and then take it a step further to rort it should be given a Nobel prize.

Clearly they are smarter than everyone I know or speak to, all of whom have their own fair share of Centrelink horror stories.

In fact, forget torrid tales of child birth itself, it seems Centrelink-caused headaches and stress are the new war stories we tell over the slippery dip at the park.

While the government is putting together a special crack team to clamp down on the supposed 200,000 welfare cheats in Australia, I’m over here trying to figure out how to get someone to call me back to let me know if my registration for my daughter’s Customer Reference Number, you know that thing that says she’s real, has been activated.

While I’m not professing I’m the smartest tool in the shed, I’m certainly not the bluntest. I have a degree and years of experience in working with some of the most challenging HR and corporate systems and I still can’t work out the form that I need to fill in to help me prepare to go back to work.

When I took my seven month-old to childcare I was told I needed a few things through Centrelink in order to register for the childcare rebate. It sounded simple, little did I know.

After hours of pulling my hair out while I tried to figure it out online for the page to crash on the last section, I decided to visit Centrelink in person.

At my local branch, I patiently took a number like I’m at a deli counter about to order some overpriced salami and then waited in line with a screaming baby who thought it was fun to eat a brochure for vocational training. I sat next to the line of computers, which outnumber the amount of staff available to help people use them.

While sitting next to some smart people who knew better and actually brought a book and a packed lunch with them, my name finally got called out. A woman came over to me but it was clear she’d already had enough; she looked overworked and seemed very annoyed at people like me who have the nerve to ask her questions.

Even ABC anchor Leigh Sales is bamboozled by Centrelink. (Pic: Twitter)

I apologetically told her I couldn’t work out which form I needed to fill out so my daughter could start childcare the following week. She told me it was online and I admonished me for not having organised it sooner as it wouldn’t be done by the time I needed. Is a week no longer long enough to file a piece of paperwork?

I asked if she had a physical copy of the form, to ensure I had the right one, which I could fill in while I was in the centre. Given it was the start of the new financial year, I was told the forms she had were old and the online versions would be more up-to-date.

Let’s stop here for a moment and consider this — the actual place, the mecca of social support if you like, where staff are employed to help you aren’t even given the right and up-to-date information to pass on to those who need it. Even she has to go online to get a form as she hasn’t been equipped with the right tools to do her job. But, of course, going online to download and print the form was not something she could help me with, so my time was totally wasted and I still had no idea which form I needed.

Next I was told that to get my daughter into childcare I would have to fill in this mystery form, apply for a CRN and then wait up to 38 days — thirty-eight days! — for it to potentially get processed. And, no, they won’t issue back pay for the time it takes them to process my form. To cut a very boring and sad story short, I walked out feeling deflated, stupid and starting to wonder how much my daughter would enjoy the vocational training she had just consumed information about. Surely it would be easier to apply for that then childcare?

While I know I should have begun this process earlier, say before her conception was even considered, it still begs the question why is this process so difficult?

I remember when I was a university student, hoping to apply for Austudy. I went to Centrelink, waited my turn and then worked with the staff member who assisted me in setting up an application. It was done then and there, yes it was a long and tiring process, but it was done together and I left the building knowing that my application was correct, rather than having to wait 38 days to discover I had misunderstood a question or filled in the wrong form altogether.

How has a place that was designed by the government to assist people who need just that, assistance, become so unhelpful? While my case is not desperate in the big scheme of things, it does make me wonder what kind of support do the people seeking urgent help for basic necessities like a roof over their head or food to feed their families receive.

At the risk of sounding like one of those people who begrudge the way the digital world is changing, I’m going to put my neck on the block and say, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s due to the lack of people on hand — either over the phone or in Centrelink branches — that is the root cause of so many welfare-related nightmares.

The lack of people who genuinely care because they have been instructed to treat people like numbers and to suspect everyone is a welfare fraudster. You can see it has been drummed into them to direct everyone online, rather than spend the time with them to ensure they have the basic services to, you know, survive the basics.

We see endless stories about how the Department of Human Services, which includes Centrelink under its portfolio, has failed to meet its own targets for processing age and disability support pension claims, with the number of those processed within its target time falling about 20 per cent over the past three years.

Not surprisingly, the delays coincide with a six-year reduction of about 5000 jobs across the Department of Human Services since 2010-11, including many in Centrelink, and according to news reports, there will be more to come.

So let’s think about this again. Centrelink staff have been criticised for not processing payments at the same time they have endured 5000 job cuts over the past six years. There’s a clear correlation here. It’s not rocket science.

And the majority of the people caught up in this quagmire of a system aren’t the ones the Government says are deliberately looking to rip taxpayers off, it’s the people who are genuinely trying to do the right thing and get the support they are entitled to and, in many cases, desperately need.

Maybe we should get the 200,000-plus alleged welfare cheats in to run Centrelink for a while and see how they go. It couldn’t be much worse than the current faceless system we all know, could it? Plus if anyone knows how to stop the system being scammed it’s the ones doing the scamming.

Originally published as Hats off to the dole cheats and welfare scammers